Week Thirty-One: The Things She Carried

...and that, Best Beloved, is how the Leopard got its spots. Oh, hello there! Welcome back to the blog. We have a lovely installment for you this week. Full of dreams and imagination and memories and strange things. Alright, truth be told, this week is all about those things I find any and every time I decide to initiate a Great Purge. Doesn't always happen in the spring/summer, but does happen on a fairly regular basis. As I've moved hither and yon, I've accumulated rather a lot of stuff. Some of that stuff is useful and meaningful, but most of it is the byproduct of my tendencies to ferret away frightfully useful things that may or may not be needed or wanted at a later date. These, Dear Readers, are my skeletons. Please don't judge me too harshly...

Day 1 (211): 7th of July
Best thing about this week? Other than the mere four days of work required, the leaving on a jet plane and heading west young man is the highlight. By late evening on Saturday, I'll be safe in the bosom of the ancestral home where things make sense and I can bask in the glow of denial. Makes all other Life silliness bearable in the interim. Also motivates the Purge, as some things will be carried back Stateside for donation or destruction. Turns out I have some rather odd things in the running for Purge. Both impulse buys and strange things with unknown origins. For example, one hideous uncomfortable pair of sun specks (yes I tried them on), and one odd Happy Meal-looking bobble head toy that I know I've had for at least two moves, but I've not the foggiest from whence it came, or really even why it exists at all...

Then of course we have the pile of things that have either not been touched for years or have just far outlived their purpose. Here we have some ancient burgled airplane headphones, the charger from a Nokia I had in college, an underwater film camera (film still in it...), the charger/sync station from my 2006 Dell palm pilot (it was free and has since disappeared), and finally a 2012 planner (with not a single mark in it). Who does this?

Day 2 (212): 8th of July
An unfortunate side effect of digging in drawers is that the hits just keep on coming. One odd discovery begets another and so on. The heap of long expired birth control gave way to three cans of unused film and more odd bits of paper than I care to detail. Furthermore, found a stack of C4ISR magazines from 2011 (gosh I'm nerdy), a v rusty slinky, a random thing of lavender tea (probably stolen from a Hong Kong hotel considering the chinese lettering), gun oil, and not one but two packs of (expired) dollar store C batteries.

My many deployments and travels have resulted in the accumulation of much foreign currency, such as Japanese, Malaysian, Korean, Singaporean, Emirati, etc. Don't even get me started on the amount of Djiboutian Francs I still have. So much Monopoly money. At some point I acquired some odd plastic christmas toys with parachutes. And at the bottom you'll find a beaded bracelet I made a million years ago when having beaded bracelets was just the coolest.

Day 3 (213): 9th of July
As a wanderer of the world, I stay in many hotels, be they on ships, bases, or in normal towns. I also take things from hotels. Like keys (that I forget to shred), and apparently coffee singles, sugar, and pens. Sadly this is but a small portion of the amount I've discovered throughout the Purge.

Good Lord. It just keeps going. Must be a compulsion. Who needs this many notepads?

Day 4 (214): 10th of July
Nope. Nothing exciting in life at the moment (is there ever?) But honestly, what is this? A bag of marble-y things (with a hole in it so they can spill all over the place), and a scary finger puppet.

Good news, readers - I have graduated from places. And apparently needed several hat tassels to do so. Was I wearing three hats upon my high school graduation? And two after University? Good grief.

Day 5 (215): 11th of July
Hello. My name is Rodeo and I am a pack rat. If you give a Rodeo a little container, she will fill it with whatever will fit. For example, what to do with a Jelly Belly tin? Why not fill it with nothing but pennies, a pair of earrings, a marble-y thing, and movie ticked stubs from 2009.

I do tend to buy a lot of notebooks. It is a compulsion. Some of these have nothing in them, and some have loads of chicken scratch and doodles (apparently I have long been a doodler).

Day 6 (216): 12th of July
Ahhhh Business Class... America Bound! No more to say. But the things on the chopper this time are t-shirts. A great stack. Either impulse buys, grab bag buys, or random too-big shirts I'd have happily rocked at the age of 8, when I figured the bigger a shirt was, the better (thanks, '80s). Also some dresses that are either too big, too small (I've been many a size in my life), or too hard to explain (try things on, people!). All are getting their own bag for carriage back home. For photo purposes, my collection of nail polish that I've not used in rather a long time. So many colours.

Quality, no? Clearly I use these all the time...

Golly, Claire's?? Why? And When?

Day 7 (217): 13th of July
Erasers... so many erasers. This must have been a thing when I was just a wee young lass.

Yes. Polaroid. So much Polaroid. This one still has 3 photos left in the film.

Most importantly, I carry my memories. Daw... Gosh we look young.

My skeletons. And this has only been the tip of a large, frightening iceberg. Necessary evils, indeed. 

Week Twenty-Six: Blithering to Bavaria

I turn to others (mostly dead others) this week to say what I am perfectly capable of saying. They just have better names and as such their way of saying things is better. The week started in dreams and ended in Bavaria.

Day 1 (176): 2nd of June
“What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)
How about this illusion? Who knew there was a rather cheeky face in the washing machine?

Day 2 (177): 3rd of June
“It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.” (George Santayana)
There is certainly a volatile spirit in the door handle, too. Creeeeepy....

“By object is meant some element in the complex whole that is defined in abstraction from the whole of which it is a distinction.” (John Dewey)
Is this an abstraction? At least there are no faces in the tumble dryer.

Day 3 (178): 4th of June 
“I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade... And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.” (Ron White)

That has nothing to do with this photo of the moon. Unless the party is under the waxing moon.

Nor has it anything to do with this one of some pins. It's the year of the horse, folks. Get with it.

Day 4 (179): 5th of June 

“If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.” (Anatole France)

Is the path of a Naval Officer beautiful? Sometimes, certainly. 

“A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” (Eleanor Roosevelt)
Sing it, Ellie! Being as how it is my mum's birthday today, that is fitting. She's as strong as they come. Happy Birthday, Mama! I am who I am because of you.

Day 5 (180): 6th of June 

“My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.” (Mitch Hedberg)
Gone to Bavaria. Yes, that is a bit of Germany, but don't tell the locals. They'll get their lederhosen in a bunch. Gosh it's nice here. So green and mountainy and summery and sleepy. And I'm in a quaint but quite nice B&B called Hotel Fux. Yes that is really the name. It means Fox. But yes, I know. People are so nice. And things are so simple and quiet and ordered. Bless the German mentality. This is the view from my balcony. Big cross on top of big turtle-headish mountain.

Day 6 (181): 7th of June 

“Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.” (Mark Twain)
Do you want to build a sn- hang on, sorry... Do you want to climb a mountain? Of course I do. Because I am ridiculous. That thing I photographed yesterday? The one with the rocky bit and the cross? Why not. I've a couple days to kill in Bavaria and nothing else to do. Besides it's free and the weather is nice. Ready for a slew of photos? So nice and zen in the woods.

Even when those woods are on a rather intense slant. Why did I decide this was a good idea?

Even this tree wants me to turn around. "Back that way, silly thing. That way is down. Haven't you sweated enough?" Yes, I was doing my celebrated impression of a whore in church. Sorry, I mean to say a woman of the night in a house of worship.

Around this point I got adopted by a family of germans going at about my pace. Though really I think they mostly were concerned I'd kill myself without supervision. In the words of every Star Wars character ever, "I have a bad feeling about this."

Last little respite before the final climb. Again the temptation to turn round and go back. Only 45 mins back down (by the way, it took me just over two hours to get up here...) but only 20 mins more to the top of the peak... why not.

Didn't make it to the toppest top. Largely because of the omigawd pain in the spinal area. Also because the last 70 feet or so of climb was pretty much vertical. And my celebrated impression of a Bavarian mountain goat was a bit, erm, nonexistent. And I was wearing these.

Not too bad for a girl in pain. Got back down in almost exactly 45 minutes, mostly driven by the prospect of a soft bed and pain killers. But I made it farther up than I expected. To the shoulder just there by the top. Gosh this picture makes it look much less intimidating...

Day 7 (182): 8th of June 
“Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.” (William James)
There were grand plans in place in order to keep on speaking terms with the universe, but instead I opted to keep on speaking terms with my spine (which still has not forgiven me for yesterday). Probably a boring proposition and one that is robbing me of a valuable experience, but really I think I'll stick with not being in any more pain than the usual. Standing up and going for food is a grievous enough prospect... I mean, look at the sad face on the pastry... I don't want to make that face.

See? Honestly. How pathetic. (But also so tasty - probably why it's sad.)

More of Bavaria to come. Consider the end of this week as a teaser for next week, which will be rather the opposite (i.e. mostly Bavaria with a close out w/end back in dear old Napoli).
“You tell 'em I'm comin' and hell's comin' with me!” (Sheriff Earp)